Bill Moyes, intrepid ‘Australian Birdman’ who pioneered foot-launched hang-gliding

He never expected when he first flew off mountains that piloting kites in that way would explode as a sport

Bill Moyes, who has died aged 92, was an aerial daredevil and hang-gliding pioneer who broke records (and numerous bones) flying foot-launched gliders. “The Australian Birdman”, as he was known, was one of the sport’s founding fathers.
When Moyes first got his hands underneath a new design of kite in 1967 at the age of 34, hang-gliding was in its infancy, and in Australia practised as an off-shoot of water-skiing, where participants were towed into the air by boat, hanging from a kite.
Moyes, an athletic barefoot water-skier with a eye for publicity, thought this was just the thing to liven up his interest in the sport – and he had long dreamed of flight. The kite was not easy to master – the five hopefuls to try it before him had all ended up in hospital, one with a missing ear. “It was a comedy,” Moyes recalled. But he had an idea of how it worked and he gave the boat driver strict instructions to go at 30mph. “Off we went, and I flew the kite for eight miles, turned around and came back. I let go at about 150ft and glided down.”
Within six weeks he had reached 1,045ft above Lake Tuggerah on Central Coast in Australia, setting the first-hang gliding altitude record. A year later he reached 2,870ft while towing on Lake Ellesmere in New Zealand. That year he also became the first hang-glider pilot to transition from tow and water-ski launch to foot-launching in the hills, from Mount Crackenback in the Australian Alps, pioneering the sport of hang-gliding as it is practised today.
“Bill never anticipated when he first flew off the mountains that it would explode as a sport, but it wasn’t too long before friends began asking him to build them a hang-glider,” his website states. He made 12 gliders for friends in the first year and 20 in the second as the business grew. But Moyes was first and foremost a pilot with a passion for testing his own designs.
He became the star attraction at water-ski shows. At one, an eye-witness reported: “Everybody, all 20,000 of them, just gasped. There was a deathly silence [as he went] in a glide… and landed right at the edge of the water. He just stepped straight on to the beach, nodded and walked off.”
Moyes took the routine to America, becoming the highest-paid thrill-show performer in the country. He donned a flashy white jumpsuit and exhilarated audiences by being towed behind a dune buggy and then cutting loose and executing spins and turns on the flight down.
In 1970 he became the first man to glide into the Grand Canyon – Paramount had offered him $250,000 for the footage. “When we got up there, I was dropping a little pair of paper parachutes over the edge,” he recalled. “I thought I could find some rising air to help. And one of the rangers said, ‘What are you doing?’ ”
Moyes told him he was going to fly a kite, to which the ranger replied: “Bulls–t you are. This is a national park, not a circus ground.” Moyes was ready to leave, but then the ranger added: “I don’t believe you can do it.”
Moyes returned at night, assembled his wing under cover of darkness and launched the next day. The flight was successful, but he was too preoccupied with the cameras to enjoy it.
He was lucky to survive the next stunt, an attempt to fly at 8,600ft behind a Stearman bi-plane. “I underestimated the horse power that plane can put out,” he said. “That thing nearly tore me to pieces. It flew along at 60mph with the sail fully luffed. It tore all the rubbers out and battens flew out like a shower of spears. I was lucky to get down alive. I just lost a bit of skin, which we did in those days. We bled almost every time we flew!”
William Thomas John Moyes, always known as Bill, was born in Bronte, one of Sydney’s southern beach suburbs, on July 12 1932, the eldest of six children – four sisters and one brother. Both parents were immigrants: his father, also Bill, was a policeman who rose to detective in the New South Wales force. The family of his mother Mary, née Taranto, was from Sicily, and he grew up speaking Italian.
He married his childhood sweetheart Molly at 17, left school at 18 and started working in Molly’s family’s fruit shop – “the worst four years of my life,” he said. Later he became an electrician working on cars. Soon he bought his own garage, which became his glider workshop.
Moyes was a keen sportsman who liked ocean-swimming, and through his friendship with the racing driver “Gelignite” Jack Murray discovered water skiing, going on to become a champion in the sport.
Moyes was always willing to take risks. He once tried launching from a motorbike, and in 1981 he climbed and took off from the summit of Kilimanjaro with his son, while at the age of 52 he considered dropping out of a balloon above Mount Everest. He never believed in helmets but suffered five serious crashes that resulted in multiple fractures during his career.
At his workshop, Moyes continued to experiment with new hang-glider designs. “To say I invented anything is rubbish,” he later said. “You don’t invent things, you just make discoveries. I learnt from seagulls, I watched them flying opposite my house in the north-west wind, and when they made a turn they stretched one wing and made it more efficient. I was trying to figure it out.”
In 1977 he received the Queen Elizabeth Anniversary Silver Medal, and in 1980 he appeared on the Australian version of This Is Your Life. In 1992 he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and in 2014 he was awarded the FAI Gold Air Medal for his contribution to aviation.
Bill Moyes is survived by his wife Molly and by three daughters and a son. His eldest daughter predeceased him.
Bill Moyes, born July 12 1932, died September 24 2024